News and Social Media

Blog posts on other sites:

February 21, 2107: In January 2017, inAllthings.org posted a 1500-word essay that was an edited version of a presentation I gave at Baylor University’s Institute on Faith and Learning symposium on religion and sport Fall 2015. Two weeks later, Liz Moss at inAllthings.org informed me that Daytona Beach News-Journal had requested permission to reprint the article in their print and online editions during Speedweeks at Daytona this year. The print version was a front-page spread in the Faith section published Saturday. The online version went live this week.

In the spring of 2016, Kelly J. Baker announced that she would accept pitches for blog posts for her blog about music that affected our lives. I quickly threw a pitch together about how Lynard Skynard had been a soundtrack for my teenage years but life experiences had changed my perception of the band and its music. Accepted and posted as Track 3 in the series, Tuesday is Gone reflects my pop culture side in conversation with my academic side.

News:

The blog post concerning NASCAR featured inAllthings.org received a permission request to print the article as is in the Daytona News-Journal. The piece appeared the Saturday before qualifying for the 2017 Daytona 500.

At the one year anniversary (July 2016) of the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state capitol in South Carolina, the local FOX/ABC affiliate wanted to talk about the battle flag again. The day before the interview events in Dallas and the rash of law enforcement initiated shootings meant that flag issue was a non-event. The FOX broadcast shifted gears in mid interview so the images were still of the flag though we talked about race relations more generally. The ABC broadcast fixed the images and focused on the nature of how all of us are trained to think in racial terms even when we think we don’t.

In the wake of the Dylan Roof shootings at Mother Emmanuel in June 2015, I received two requests for interviews by news outlets. Reuter’s staff writer was struck by how many folks talked about Wednesday night services so contacted me to talk about the cultural nature of the event and its significance in the shooting. On the same day, a local FOX affiliate journalist wanted someone to talk about the Confederate battle flag that played such a prominent role in Roof’s social media presence. No one would give her an on-air interview, so she reached out to Mercer and I agreed to the interview.

Other sites:

In Spring 2015, C-SPAN American History TV recorded and broadcast a lecture from one of my American history survey courses (HIS 160: Biblical Texts and American History). Though the headline says Religion and Slavery, the lecture helped bridge a portion of the course that dealt with slaveowners defense of the peculiar institution to how enslaved people in the American context interpreted the same scriptures for themselves.